Who was right, Gandhi or Bhagat Singh and Surya Sen, asks Katju

When Neville Chamberlain, the then Prime Minister of England, came back to London from Germany in 1938 after the shameful Munich Pact (which surrendered Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia, to the Nazis), Winston Churchill, who was then in the Opposition, said in the House of Commons:

“You were given a choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war”.

So Indians, you were given a choice between that fake ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi on the one hand, and the genuine freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and Surya Sen on the other.

You were given a choice between a genuine freedom struggle, which is always an armed struggle (because no one gives up his Empire without an armed fight), in which no doubt millions of our countrymen would have perished, but which would have led to real freedom for India and creation of a prosperous country, or a fake freedom struggle, in which the bloodshed was avoided, but which has led to massive poverty, massive unemployment, almost non existent healthcare and good education for our masses, etc.

You chose the dishonourable path of Gandhi, instead of the honourable path of Bhagat Singh and Surya Sen, but you will now have massive bloodshed.

Many people say that the violent method of freedom struggle in India against the British, as advocated and practised by Bhagat Singh, Surya Sen (Masterda), Chandrashekhar Azad, Ashfaqulla, Rajguru, Khudiram Bose, Ram Prasad Bismil, etc was wrong.

They assert that it would have led to enormous bloodshed and was bound to have failed. Hence, they allege, the non violent method of Gandhi was correct.

I totally disagree. Firstly, do imperialists give up their huge Empire because someone resorts to hunger strike or does salt march or sings ‘Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram’?

Did the American colonies get freedom from England by non violent methods? Did George Washington fight the British with his Continental army, or by offering them flowers and satyagrah? Did Bolivar free the Latin American countries with his battalions or by presenting the Spaniards lollipops? Did Ho Chi Minh fight the French by speeches, or with guns?

India got independence not because of Gandhi but because in the Second World War Germany attacked and weakened England, which made the British appeal to the Americans for help. In return, the Americans put pressure on the British to open up India to American investments too, (as they did not want a British monopoly in India).

So the ‘Independence’ of 1947 was really opening up the Indian economy to U.S. investments too. This had nothing to do with Gandhi. In fact had Gandhi had his way, India would never have got independence (see my blog ‘Gandhi–a British agent’).

A freedom struggle is necessarily an armed struggle. No doubt the Indian people would have suffered enormous casualities in such a struggle against the British, but what of that? As Thomas Jefferson said “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

I remember I was with a Frenchman in Paris some time back. I told him “Why did you French surrender to the Nazis in 1940? You should have fought on. Why did you surrender Paris to the Germans?”

He replied that the French army had been defeated, and if France had not surrendered there would have been enormous French casualities, and a lot of property, including priceless French cultural treasures would have been destroyed.

I said that even if that had happened Paris should never have been surrendered, but instead should have been burnt down by Frenchmen themselves, as the Russians did to Moscow in September, 1812, instead of surrendering it to Napoleon’s army.

When the German attack on England was about to commence, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in a historic speech in the House of Commons on 19th May, 1940 said (quoting the Bible) :

“Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict, for it is better for us to perish in battle, than to look upon the outrage of our nation, and of our altar.”

Then again on 4th June he said “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, — we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.”

Some people may ask : with what weapons could we have fought the British? We did not have any?

The answer is; in guerilla war one fights with the weapons of the enemy, by snatching them from him. And after all, Bhagat singh, Surya Sen, etc got weapons from somewhere.

Our ancestors chose the dishonourable, easy way out offered by that British agent Gandhi, instead of the difficult but genuine path shown by Bhagat Singh and Surya Sen, and we are still suffering for that, even 69 years after independence, and will continue to suffer for many years more.

I regard the true freedom fighters of our country as Surya Sen (Masterda), and his other compatriots of the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar, Bhagat Singh, Khudiram Bose, Chandrashekhar Azad (whose memorial in Alfred Park in Allahabad, I would visit often to bow my head there), Ashfaqulla, Rajguru, Ram Prasad Bismil (whose song ‘Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai’ is known to many), etc.

In our national historiography these real patriots are barely mentioned, they are generally relegated to a footnote, and treated as mavericks, deviants or outsiders, not freedom fighters. That fake ‘Mahatma’ and his coterie, and that pawn of the Japanese fascists, are depicted as the real freedom fighters.

Gandhi described the militant Indian youth fighting against British Imperialism as ‘misguided souls’. He often said that militant nationalism was injurious to India’s struggle for freedom. In reality he knew that if those methods became popular among the Indian masses his own popularity would decline, and his ‘Mahatmahood’ may disappear.

When the British sentenced Bhagat Singh to death, Gandhi made no effort to save his life. He never wrote any letter to the British Viceroy to commute his sentence, nor did he issue any public appeal for this purpose, and he never went to meet Bhagat Singh in jail when the latter was on hunger strike.

By diverting the genuine freedom struggle against the British from its revolutionary path to harmless and nonsensical channels like satyagrah, Gandhi was ensuring that British rule over India would continue.

It is said that Gandhi gave us Independence in 1947. This is totally false. In fact by diverting the genuine revolutionary independence struggle against the British in India (see one of my earlier posts) to harmless and nonsensical channels like ‘Satyagrah’ Gandhi was ensuring that India should not become independent.

Why then did the British leave? Surely it was not because of the dramas Gandhi was doing (fasting, salt march, etc). Does anyone give up an Empire because of this ?

No, it was because Germany attacked England in the Second World War and considerably weakened it (in fact Germany would probably have conquered England if America had not helped it) that England, realizing that she could not continue holding on to India politically, withdrew.

So it is not Gandhi who gave us Independence but Adolf Hitler (though of course that was not his intention)

I have also called ‘Netaji’ Subhas Chandra Bose a Japanese agent, a remark over which many people have got incensed. But If ‘Netaji’ was not a Japanese agent, why did he give up the fight against the British when the Japanese surrendered? He should have carried on a guerilla war against the British.

If the Japanese had been victorious against the British do you seriously think they would have granted independence to India? No, they would have made India a Japanese colony, and ruthlessly exploited and looted it, as they did to parts of China which were under their occupation..

In fact Bose was being used by the Japanese, and they would have bumped him off the moment his utility for them was over. He was no doubt a brave and personally honest man, but he had become an agent of Japanese fascist imperialism.

The genuine patriots and revolutionaries, who have been sidelined in our history, were as much victims of the Congress Party, which was firmly in Gandhi’s grip, as of British Imperialism.